


Don't Forget Me, Okay?

by KingOfFanfiction



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Barely any Louis, Chaptered, I'm Sorry, M/M, Niall Horan - Freeform, Slice of Life, Twisted Humor, Zayn Malik - Freeform, amnesia!niall, slight!Haylor, ziall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 01:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3469889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingOfFanfiction/pseuds/KingOfFanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character Count: 21,000</p>
<p>__ _</p>
<p>"I don't have anything to lose, but my memories of you."</p>
<p>__ _</p>
<p>Time stops for someone who can't remember the seconds and runs out for someone who can't afford to miss a mere minute.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Niall is a living fossil of 22 February 2013, and Zayn is barely living in the present day.</p>
<p>__ _</p>
<p>It's all about cigarettes, sticky notes, and metaphorical stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 0

**Author's Note:**

> Aye, this is my first work on here, so feel free to critic or cry, or do whatever you please as long as it isn't rude.
> 
> (This is also on my Wattpad: http://www.wattpad.com/story/28577353-don%27t-forget-me-okay )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Empty Prologue  
> Character Count: 1,024

It's a small apartment eight floors above the lobby. It sits above a busy street, a dirty, ruthless, busy street. The window is cased in layers of dust, faded black sticky notes hung all over the uneven glass; one yellow sticky note rests in an odd place. The stairs are chiseled and rusted, elegance and poverty clash with each burdened step. The stairway is hollow, a window on each floor, but the sunlight doesn't stream in, instead the ugly jaundice lighting illuminates the stairs in crackling beams. Each floor smells of smoke and alcohol; each inhale's heavy of last night's mistakes or this morning's vomit. The carpet is cheap and rough against the soles of shoes. Varieties of lives sit on the floors. You'll find the passionate artist in room 22G, the heavy punk girl who uses her body as a canvas for metal pieces and ink on 30G, the old woman who's, too kind and smells of jasmine and cat litter on 31G, the awkward socialite roommates with too many technology products sitting around that beep constantly in 64G, the male escort who tries to meet rent with lone strangers and used condoms in 12G, the infamous author who causes traffic yearly with his 'Million Rainstorm' and, too many secrets in 70G, and the boy who owns the dusty window and sticky notes. The boy who forgets every day. The boy with anterograde amnesia on 71G.

__ _

Niall shifts again, legs twitching at the vivid dream of crystal waters and warm beams of light. The moonlight drifts into his dream, replacing the warmth with hard asphalt and exhaust. He jerks and softly collapses into himself, cold linens pooled around his feet. His hands are shaking and his skin covered with ringlets of sweat. His alarm clock flashes three-something in the morning. This is his room albeit it doesn't feel the same. He turns his head, careful not to anger the throbbing headache, but he stops at the crinkle of paper.

" ** _Niall, your name is Niall Horan._** " and Niall blinks rapidly, he knows that. " ** _You have anterograde amnesia. Basically, you can't remember anything, including me._** " he sits up this time, small hands grasping the sticky note and clutching it. He analyzes the note, not remembering putting this down - but that's normal because he can't remember yesterday - not recognizing the chicken-scratch cursive. His ears twitch at the silent billow of his dark purple curtains. His head turns slightly, but he can already see the numerous others. Rows and rows of neatly placed sticky notes rustle, a paper applause, in the expanse of his room. The sticky notes are a deep black, thick white ink sprawled on the faces. They're like second skins to Niall, important things that he remembers loving or doing. They're tattooed with dates and daily tasks, something he's used to, but the sticky note in his hand is yellow, not black like the others. He notices the oddly misplaced yellow notes among the onyx sea of sticky notes. They're placed in random patterns, each one with different reminders.

" ** _My name is Zayn, but you don't know me._** " Niall watches the loose tips sway, and he reads the other notes, fingers dangerously on the verge of cutting on the thin edges of paper. " ** _You loved me yesterday, but you don't know me today. Let me help you remember._** " The note next to it explains who this person is, but nothing triggers memories in Niall. " ** _You don't know me. We met as neighbors but ended in a cliché romance. I was an interviewer, and you were my subject for about a year, maybe two._** " Niall inhales sharply at the next note. " ** _You cried here, a month or two after we met, because of loss, and I made love to you right here (31 March - 1 April 2014)._** " Niall rubs his chest, violation and fear threading into his skin. " ** _We kissed right above you, on the roof. You stretched forward and kissed me with cold lips; it was snowing that day, a summer day (7 April 2014.)._** " His palm rubs up the wall, knocking a few notes off the wall in the process. He doesn't feel anything, no spark, no tingles of happiness or shock, nothing. " ** _My book never published, but I saved you a copy. (27 July 2014)._** " The next one makes him shudder. " ** _I witnessed you break down right here, and when you called my name, I heard you._** " The note is pointing towards his balcony, and Niall steps towards his bedroom door. " ** _I asked you to marry me. (28 November 2014)._** " Niall feels the cool band dig into his skin and he starts to realize that he doesn't remember anything about his spouse. His fingers run over the cream wallpaper, his other hand touching the doorknob. He hesitantly turns the golden sphere, hoping to be met with his spouse, but the hallway is empty. The yellow sticky note on the wall opposite to him reads: " ** _You said 'Okay.' (29 November 2014)._** "

He shouts _Hello?_ into the apartment, but no one responds. His floorboards are peeling and worn; they scratch his bare toes, but he ventures further into the dark shelter. He hears the hum of his fridge, the creaks of the china cabinet he inherited from his mum, the rattling of his walls, but he doesn't hear the voice he's hoping for. The floor runs cold under his toes, and he begins to shiver, cold sweat tumbling down his spine. Lone pieces of dog hair drift in the air, most likely from Momo, and the chill nibbles harshly at his bare arms. He feels the need to cry, but he doesn't have a reason to because he can't remember his own fuel of anticipation; that makes him want to cry even more. The moonlight dances through the casement windows, past two plush armchairs, and onto a coffee table. A large red book sits on the table, a thin burgundy one on top, and he sees the yellow sticky note wavering on the cover.

" ** _Don't forget me, okay?_** "

__ _


	2. i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Somber Beginning  
> Character Count: 6,003

**_February_ **

Niall feels the stranger next to him on the elevator deepen his stare, and he feels the need to pull his jacket closer to himself. The stranger is almost panting at how hot the elevator is, but he refrains to acknowledge the ridiculous reaction, focusing on Niall instead. It's mid-afternoon on a Friday, the day when the world runs unstably on drunken howls, humid rain showers, and the occasional punch of dry cackles.

"It's going to be cold today."

Niall hears each syllable perfectly like the stranger's told him this countless times. Niall listens to instinct and tightens his jacket around his waist.

"Polar cold." the stranger emphasizes.

Niall nods, watching the digital number change from two to three. He watches the illuminated orange buttons glow under the disgusting white lighting. The stranger looks, too classy to be standing in the poor quality elevator. He's wearing a silk-red tie, wool gloves, one removed to fan himself with, a scarf, neatly ironed suit, and briefcase in hands. He watches the vein jut out of the stranger's throbbing, red hand. Niall wonders if his skin is really as plastic as it looks.

"But it's _so bloody_ hot in here."

He watches the man fan himself with the end of his tie, even going as far to wipe his hairline with the material. Niall offers an apologetic smile, but it comes off lopsided and disturbed. "You weren't kidding about the amnesia, were you?" the man says as he straightens his back with satisfying cracks, and he smirks in Niall's direction when the elevator doors open at three. Even in the dark lighting, the twinkle of sadistic amusement gleaming from his grin is distinct. It makes him look older than he seems, almost sadly so.

"I'll be back for another drink on Sunday. Don't forget to read the book, Niall."

Niall stiffens, and bolts out of the elevator, ignoring the other passenger trying to enter the elevator. The man stumbles back and Niall can hear him whisper, "Amnesia?" He hears the man chuckle as he sprints for cover. His first option is to skid around the corner and fling open the door of the small coffee shop located on the third floor. When he swings the door open, he's hit head-on with a bland breeze and the dull roar of Indie music.

Niall ignores the worried glances he receives from startled patrons, and orders a coffee he knows he'll tolerate. Coffee in hand, Niall makes his way to the singular booth looking out into the hallway of the apartments. It feels almost empty in the small shop. He's in the midst of mentally complaining about the lack of ambiance in the café when the other man from the elevator approaches him, coffee and glasses lopsided.

"I'm a writer," he quips as he scatters his journal and coffee over the designated table of Niall's. He's sitting now, discretely smoking a cigarette, but the smoke is easily mistaken for steam, so there're no complaints. Niall is all wide eyes and confusion when the man folds his hands and says, "I'm a writer named Zayn." The writer smokes, hastily, and Niall feels this alien, empty man watching him. Like something cracking slowly, deeply, irreversibly within him. He shifts slightly and watches the way Zayn scribbles mercilessly in his notebook about their encounter, the scratching obnoxious and continuous.

"Why are you talking to me?"

"You have amnesia."

"Anterograde amnesia."

"That."

The coffee shop during the sunrise on a Friday is a low rumble of clinking porcelain cups, the drone of tired students, whipped cream murmuring into cappuccinos, Styrofoam cups squeaking as they're pressed against each other. It's not particularly loud, but the noise is the kind to quicksand someone. Drown them slowly and leave nothing except clawing fingertips and air bubbles breaking the surface. The feeling covers Niall, and he grinds his teeth together; his stomach coils painfully.

"I want to write a book, about your disorder."

"Oh."

Niall builds half a question over whether or not all writers look like this: Dark circles bruising under eyes and complexion caught between yellow and white; the occasional twitches of the brow. The question collapses as soon as the writer stubs out his cigarette and catches Niall's gaze. One long, hard, unbreakable line from one pair of eyes to another until someone flinches and turns away. Zayn quickly puts his cigarette in his drink when a barista questioningly and slowly walks past their table.

"You okay?" the writer, who's now drinking black coffee with nicotine, demands briskly. Niall shifts the fringe in his face and pulls his grey jumper down his hands further. Zayn doesn't seem to have any time, much rather patience for any alternatives, so he nods shortly and looks around the coffee shop. The occupants are all grey-tinted, dullness and shattered dreams seeping from their lips and eyes into their steaming drinks. Niall wonders if he looks as broken as they do.

Zayn sips on his black coffee, lips pursed and eyes vigorously staring Niall down. His eyelashes are linked together and his teeth hidden behind his lips; Niall flinches from the penetrating gaze, "What?"

Zayn shakes his head, questioning gazes falling from his ruthless locks and continues to sip the bitter drink. Niall has the sweetest coffee you can get, dumps of sugar and globs of hazelnut creamer to erase the taste of coffee; Zayn has black coffee infused with ash and nicotine that chokes in his throat and smells like burnt coffee beans. Niall thinks you can tell a lot about a person's personality by the type of coffee they order.

Zayn's sweeping the end of his pen over his lips now, eyes studying Niall's. His eyes are still wide and almost terrified when Zayn snorts in his drink. He looks like he's going to make a statement about Niall's habit of looking like an owl when he shifts his gaze to his wrist. Zayn curses under his breath as he reads the marked time.

He stands and takes his coffee with him, "I'll stop by tomorrow," he smirks over the rim of his coffee and makes a soon-to-be daily remark, "don't forget."

— _

When Niall returns home from his unexpected shift at the bar, he's trying to waft away the scent of metallic alcohol and heady smoke from the strands of his hair, he sees a man he doesn't recognize on the stairs. He's struggling to reach the top step of the sixth flight, his legs wobbling as if they'd collapse under his weight. He's wheezing and grasping his ribs, almost as if his lungs will break away from their confinement - ribs - and squish to the floor.

Niall quietly shoulders past him; he's close to the seventh floor when the man drops his pad and falls to his knees. Niall looks at the stairs longingly before deciding to help the man. It's almost disturbing how broken his back looks from this angle, all fabrics carving the blades of bones in sharp angles and emaciated lines, it's pitiful and disgusting all at once.

"Sorry for startling you, N-"

The man stops talking, shoves Niall's hands off, and gathers his things.

"My name is Zayn, I moved in next to you."

Niall feels the depression radiating off the man's calloused hands and framed eyes, "I'm sorry, I must have forgotten. I've got something amnesia-"

"Anterograde amnesia."

"That." Niall whispers as he helps Zayn up by the elbow. Zayn thanks him, chest shaking with each inhale, "I'm coming over to talk to you again," Niall doesn't remember a first, but he blames his head, "around eight tomorrow. Don't forget." Zayn laughs to himself because Niall will forget, but he bounds up the stairs, ahead of Niall and up to his room. His tan skin and sharp jaw lines disappear around the corner of the wall, and Zayn is gone.

Anxiously thinking about the unknown man who happens to know him, he climbs the rest of the way to his apartment door. He doesn't miss Zayn entering the room next to his. He ignores the faint, twisted smile on Zayn's face.

— _

"Your eyes have changed colour again haven't they?"

There's an abundant of knocks on his door when Niall inquires Momo, his dog, about his sore hips and new eye colour. Momo takes his protective stance, but Niall hushes him and scuttles towards the door.

Niall peers into the peep-hole. The man is idly resting a cigarette in between his forefinger and middle. A notebook is tucked tightly under his right arm, two pens stuck behind his ear. Tufts of black hair jut out from underneath the black beanie and framed glasses. Niall doesn't remember this person, doesn't even recognize his face.

Niall opens the door lightly, only to be met with the man to be much closer than he expected, pupils dilated and bright. "Hi, names Zayn. I moved in next door to you about a week ago; I'm an author, a novelist, a poet," he coughs, "anyways, point is that we've talked. Two times."

"Two?"

The silence that follows is obtrusive and lethargic. Zayn puts his cigarette between his perfectly white teeth, the end bobbing dangerously, and searches for a lighter in his pocket with a free hand. "Yeah," he says between closed teeth, "you obviously don't remember, but I'm here to propose an idea."

Zayn welcomes himself in, but Momo seems to know Zayn, so Niall eases a bit. "Am I in your memory book thing?" Zayn asks as he flips through the manila folders and books spread on Niall's coffee table, hand still searching for the lighter.

"I don't think so."

Zayn's lit his cigarette.

Zayn makes a sound of disapproval when he finds the book; he flips through the pages with long fingers, smiling at the opened page of the newspaper with him on it. It was the picture of the 'shocking' news that the paps had caught: Zayn smoking. "Nope, I'm in here. Did you forget to read it today?" Zayn asks as he hisses out smoke from his teeth, long and treacly streaks of dull grey and white. Niall opens his mouth to answer, but Zayn begins to talk again.

"I'm here because of an idea."

"An idea?"

"An idea that involves _you_." Zayn smiles. But when Zayn smiles it's not with all of his face, his lips move up slightly, but the other regions of his face remain stationary in their gloomy state. His lines from smiling are thin and barely noticeable. Zayn's smile is emotionless and sad, misery and suffering wrapped up neatly and packaged in pearly white teeth and raised lips.

"It's about a book, a novel about a man who erases himself at the end of each day, and what's a better source than someone who can't remember yesterday?"

Niall flinches; Zayn notices.

"Listen, we're going to have a-a-. . .an _interview_ tomorrow." Niall swallows thickly, and he realizes that he's been standing in his open doorway this whole time. The shadows in his apartment ink across the floor and lace around Zayn's face, and all Niall can see is the small pinpoint of orange that pulses with each inhale of Zayn's. He can tell that Zayn is writing something, he can hear the squeaking of the felt-tip marker on a sticky note. Zayn walks across the room, reaches behind the door to stick the note and flashes that monochromatic smile again at Niall.

"Don't forget."

Momo crawls in between Niall's legs when Zayn shuts the door behind him. The dog wags his tail, head nudging Niall's hand to pet the greying hairs. Niall gives into the whimpers and pleas, small hands fitting under the jaw of the dog before gently rubbing the sharp ears of the German Shepard. The sun's setting again, an uneasy atmosphere settling into Niall's chest as the sun drifts past view behind the tall buildings. The white, shadowy sphere slowly rising to take place of the sun gives him a firm chill of emptiness and expectancy. He doesn't realize he's gripping Momo's greying hair harshly until his whines turn into a low growl. Niall quickly unwraps his fingers, apologies leaking out of his mouth.

"I'm sorry, Mo. I got distracted."

That seems frequent for Niall, constantly being distracted and never finding enough time to even out the reckless run of his thoughts. Niall's a hollow shell of someone covered in a thin layer of past memories and fading new ones. He's constantly being reboot, existing memories failing and dispersing into nothing. His brain is scorched in the heat of failure and pain; there's nothing to cool the angry war ablaze in him.

Every time Niall lies down for bed, he's met with a twisted, refreshed beginning, so that's why he made a page for Zayn in his notebook. He clipped out the picture of Zayn smoking from his magazine and wrote down everything Zayn's told him.

A gentle, yet curt guideline for his new life everyday.

__ _

Niall has a scrapbook filled with pages of names, phone numbers, and dates glued to its pages. Polaroid portraits of people, little descriptions of the person scribbled underneath them along with the dates. Liam Payne: model who requests dry whiskey with limes every Sunday; heat strokes (7 February 2013), Luke Hemmings: new waiter who works Tuesday night shifts at DEANS; has issues with mother; wants to be 'punk' (9 September 2010), Cher Lloyd: makeup artist and nurse (23 February 2008), Harry Styles: best mate; tattoo artist; sports fanatic; addiction (4 March 2012), and Louis Tomlinson: moved out; best friend; phone number no longer in use; calls you 'Ni' (24 February 2008).

A book of memories. It's a synopsis of Niall Horan: neighbors, acquaintances, old friends, new strangers, presented with facts or traits, daily tasks. It's a guideline for him to follow, but there's someone new, not that all the faces are new to him, they are, but there's an odd one out.

There's a man, leaning back on what appears to be the brick wall outside his building, cigarette loosely hanging between his long, tan fingers, little clumps of burnt paper and tobacco falling from the mildly orange tip. Smoke twirls and filters in long strides, dancing through the strands of his hair and small pelts of rain. His jaw is lax, and lips pursed, the monochromatic grey smoke streams through his lips. His jaw is sharp and arms laced with ink. He isn't looking at the camera, and the rain causes the colours on the corners to fuse together in a blurry state.

There's five words scratched under the picture: _Neighbor; smokes; author; sad smile._  


Every day a new face and Polaroid fills a page, descriptions scribbled under them. Niall feels like he's betraying all the happy smiling faces because he won't remember them tomorrow.

He's strangers with the people he's supposedly known for so long.

— _

" ** _Come over next door, I'm waiting._** " Niall listens to the instruction written on the sticky note and ends up next door with Zayn Malik.

Today the conversation resumes in Zayn's apartment next-door. It's a box cluttered full of balled papers, half-empty cups of cold coffee, a myriad of achromatic shapes, the walls a dark maroon with misplaced, black handprints splattered on the walls. The sheets are brittle and distorted over the cream mattress; tapestries dangling limply like surrender flags. Little cigarette stubs and dull pills are arranged on an expensive glass dining table to spell, " _nIALL_ ". Everything is a thin veneer of white fragility, barely holding away the post-modern asbestos. It ostracizes Niall, but he takes in all of Zayn, greedily absorbing the mysterious stains on his shirts and chicken scratch writing.

"You don't like it?" Zayn muses as he shoves packets of papers off the couch and into the floor. Niall thinks that Zayn herds everything in the room together. Splayed out against the couch, Zayn is the kind of guy to belong in this sort of place - probably - or the kind of guy who has selfishly gotten used to this high class superficiality. A kind of stuffed, hollow man, shadows falling between the emotion and the response.

"Why the hand prints?"

Zayn chuckles and flings his hand towards the walls, " _It's art._ "

Niall fiddles with his thumbs and hugs himself. He hisses silently through his teeth as he steps on a cigarette bud, "It looks like no one's home-"

" _Here._ " Zayn corrects quickly as he drums his fingers on the wrinkled surface of the leather, "This place isn't home; it's never home."

Niall doesn't say anything, he just nods and toys with the air in the crevices of his fingers, it's empty of dog hair and comfort.

"It doesn't feel like home; it's abstract."

Zayn laughs, smoke exploding in happy, broken swirls and puffs, "You're just every bit of colour, aren't you?"

"You're awful."

"Well, you're just a rainbow with dulled arches."

Niall doesn't know how to answer, so he sits calmly at the cluttered table and flicks a pill in the direction of nowhere. He feels the unnecessary nag to clean and organize the terminal of Zayn. He finds it ridiculous that Zayn's ego and reputation is snobbish celebrity who refuses anything but the best; the actual Zayn is coffee stains and seas of dust and soiled papers of past increments. Niall pulls the hem of his Derby jersey and he begins to look out the window.

"Do you ever wonder how many eight-o'clocks you've spent looking out your window, looking down at the streets you've seen for years and wondering why everything is simultaneously new? Do you ever wonder - hope - that one day you might wake up and remember yesterday? Have you ever sat in the mass of your emptiness and ever wondered how many people you've forgotten?"

Niall turns away as a man with a camera tries to snap pictures of him looking out at the jagged landscapes of broken buildings and smog. He absentmindedly wonders how his broken bones would feel encased in the cement below until he was nothing but fractured edges of chin and cartilage and elbows, knuckles, nails, and hair. Nothing but a dead body.

"Do you ever think that you can't remember because there is nothing to remember? If you do the exact same thing every single day of the week, every week of the month, all twelve months of the year, doesn't memory lose purpose? What do you think will happen if you begin breaking the routine?"

Niall realizes Zayn isn't actually asking him questions; he's filling spaces and dusting off his internal self. He's leaving once unfinished constants and muted vowels into infinities that Niall won't remember. Zayn's republishing his memories, so they do just that: break his routine.

Instead of going to the bar on Sunday, he spends his time with Zayn.

Days to turn to a month, and Niall stays with Zayn; listens to his murmur and melodic whispers of, _Are you happy?_ , _I really like you._ , Y _ou sing well._ , and _Fossilize me in your time._ Niall responds with eyes and fingertips; he lifts his tongue like a marionette suspended over him with _I want to remember this._ , _You're really nice._ , _I think I might love you._ , and _I don't want to forget you._  


At the end of the month of breaking Niall's routine, nothing's changed; he's still the hollow shell he was on the 22 of February.

Zayn's last question of the month sounds feeble and soft, almost like Zayn's been losing sleep from over thinking it, "Have you ever neglected someone important?"

— _

"I don't understand this." Niall whispers to himself in bewilderment. The date on the newspaper was wrong; Niall swore on his life that the date was not correct. Harry looms over his shoulder, beer glass in between hands and eyes scanning the paper.

He sticks his middle finger out and points at the large picture next to the third paragraph, "That's last month's paper- wait. Isn't that your shirt?"

Niall fusses and knits his eyebrows together because that _is_ his shirt. It's his favorite shirt to be specific. It's the shirt that his mum brought back for him from a Derby game. The sleeves were traced in a thick green, back and front white, and large letters in gold spelling **DERBY** on the back. The person wearing it is sitting with his back to the photographer, shoulders hunched and mused blond hair visible. The person is talking to a more fairly dressed person with thick frames who looks slightly amused, two pens tucked behind his ear.

The article says: " _Esteemed novelist, Zayn Malik has taken a liking in a new neighbor. There's been commotion about the two lately, but is there any chemistry happening? Zayn's rumored to be hitched to Perrie Edwards of the famous girl group Little Mix, but those rumors have not been proven wrong, yet. Is this little blond Zayn's new interest, or Perrie? Is there a triangle or cheating happening? Or, more importantly, are we getting another love affair book? Fans - crazed fangirls - are dying to know._ "

Niall rubs a few drops of Guinness off of the smeared ink, "They seem pretty good at getting personal information, but how did they find _my_ shirt?"

Harry stumbles as he carefully places down his tenth beer, "I don't know, but I've got another Anonymous Alcoholics meeting." Harry disappears around the corner; Niall continues to analyze the image.

Niall doesn't miss the way the man with shaved hair smiles obnoxiously over the rim of his dry Whiskey.

— _

**_March_ **

Niall's about to call to ask if Louis would like to come over for tea, - a daily thing they'd do on Friday's - but when he picks up the tea box, phone ringing under his ear, he realizes the tea is old, very old. Niall hangs the phone up, and reads the date again; the tea's expiration date was the day Louis left. He throws the ancient tea box away, an empty sigh leaving his lips. He didn't even have to try to change his schedule, it wouldn't benefit him in anyway to be honest. He did the same thing everyday, and he never grew tired of the daily, what seemed like, rituals because his brain couldn't remember - comprehend - anything further than the 22 of February, so it was no use to try and expand.

Niall was about to write down a grocery list when there's a knock on the door. His eyebrows furrow, he wasn't expecting a visitor.

He could feel the frigid temperature of his flooring seep in through his socks as he steps towards the door, the black sticky note stuck crooked on the frame becoming more prominent with each step. The hand-writing looked almost optimistic, the words, " ** _My name is Zayn Malik, and I'm the writer who lives next door. I'm coming over tomorrow, don't forget!_** " scratched across the paper in cursive swirls, almost elegantly rushed. Confusion crosses his face when he opens the door, small hand turning the squeaky knob.

His lips were turned upward, happy lines thin with untold stories and teeth showing. His eyes, however were not. They held this blank stare, almost as if he was unsatisfied of trying to smile. The brown eyes weren't crescents from the muscles of his face squinting them, they were in the shape of almonds, as if he was lazily staring into nothing. Niall feels _something_ towards this visual.

"Hi, Ni!"

Niall flinches, eyes casting upwards to his, "What?"

He waves his hand around in the air, "My name's Zayn, but we have something more important than reacquainting."

"What?"

"We have an interview," he says as he wraps around the door, and Niall, head close to Niall's, and taps on the sticky note, "today." Niall's stuck between the door and Zayn's curved torso as he turns his head to see Zayn giving him that blunt, somber smile again. Before Niall can ask him to move, Zayn moves and straightens his shirt, his ribs prominent and shaded through his white shirt, "Shall we?"

They're sitting next to each other, Niall in the white armchair and Zayn in the red. Zayn has a pen stuck behind his ear, but he's holding another pen in his right hand. Niall's confused about this man.

"Why do you carry two pens?"

"What?"

Niall points a thin finger at the pens, "You have two pens, why?"

Zayn positions himself, hands grabbing his journal, and looking at Niall, a glint of morbid humor in the kerosene-honey swirls of his iris, "Do you believe in chance?"

Niall quirks an eyebrow, "Yes, I guess."

"Well, there's a chance that I'll lose this pen, and then I'll have to find another, and that's a lot of effort, so I carry this one around. If I do lose this pen, and I don't have a backup, how will I be able to interview you?" Zayn clicks the first pen for emphasis, "It's the same concept as you and your accident. There was a chance that you'd end up with amnesia, and there was a chance that you wouldn't, but it happened and it slowly turned your brain into mush. But you don't have a back up brain, so you have to put a lot of effort into remembering important things, such as grocery lists or people."

The room is veiled in silence as Zayn scribbles _Curious, impressed with my words of wisdom._ down in his journal. He crosses his legs, gives Niall a plastic smile again. Niall points a small finger at the page, "That comma should be a semicolon."

Zayn purses his lips and shakes his head; he scribbles a dot above the comma, "I didn't know you were a grammatical expert."

  
_Points out my mistakes; likes grammar._ Niall stutters a laugh, and Zayn clears his throat.

"So, Niall, tell me, what's it like with amnesia?"

" _Anterograde_ amnesia; I don't know to be honest."

  
_Ironic_ is written between the other character traits of the infamous boy with Anterograde Amnesia. When Niall stops talking, Zayn stops his writing and pushes his glasses up with his middle finger, "Explain."

Niall folds his hands and looks down at his thumbs, "It feels like I'm stuck in time. Like time is going ahead, but it's left me behind. I'm stuck, seconds and minutes passing me by, but I don't know it."

Zayn chuckles once before looking at Niall, "So like a walking corpse?"

Niall shakes his head, "Like a living fossil."

Zayn chortles deeply and writes it down, "Why a living fossil?"

"I'm living in the moment, but my memory is a remnant of the past. A walking fossil."

Zayn nods briefly before writing it down quickly; the setting sun casts warm orange glows over his face. It shades the right side of his face, submerging the features of the right side of his face into inky darkness. His left lens catches the beam of light and reflects it back into Niall's pupil. His eyes squint and he tries to memorize every part of the olive-skinned boy's flawless face. He looks like a model, perfection knit into each eyebrow and grace laced over the sharpness of his jaw line, but his apparel is the opposite. He's dressed like an average male, but his shirt has a mystery stain near its collar that's the colour of brown, and his jeans are torn at the knees, and Niall can tell by the string of fabric that flies away from the open tear that it was torn from the durability of the fabric weakening, but he was still beautiful under the spotlight of the sun. The window wasn't a perfect reflector for the beams because the glass was uneven in places; it left jagged breaks on the skin of Zayn's face and awkward swirls on his cheeks, but Zayn still managed to look like a God.

Niall watched the way Zayn nibbled on his lip, almost as if he wished he could be smoking rather than talking to him. He ends up zoning in and out, slowly answering each question Zayn asks. His tongue was numb, and the words he answered with were unheard to him, but Zayn seemed pleased. He seemed to miss the admiration and curiosity in Niall's eyes.

"Well. That was good for now, but we're having another meeting tomorrow, okay?"

Niall nodded; he hadn't realized he was standing next to Zayn. Zayn mimicked the eerie smile before tapping the sticky note once again, "Don't forget, Niall."

Niall couldn't tell if Zayn was being earnest or sarcastic.

He didn't care.

— _

"Why is the date wrong?"

Harry ignores the question as he takes a sip of his thirteenth beer and continues to rewire the mini-fridge below the counter-top. The date on the newspaper was wrong, Niall swore on his life it was wrong.

"You've forgotten to read the date again haven't you?" Liam - the only way he knew this was because he remembered to read his journal - asked as he stepped into the bar. Once again wiping his sweat away with his tie, and remarking that " _It's bloody hot in here!_ " as he sat on the bar stool. His hair is different; it messes up Niall's train of thought.

"Your hair grew back."

Liam nods and points at his hair styled in waves, "It sure did, and it looks amazing."

Harry scoffs as he toys with a braid in his bun, eyes bloodshot, "You look like fucking David Beckham."

Liam gasps, his lips opening and closing like a fish with no water and jabs his finger in Harry's face, "You're, too much!"

Harry winks, "Or I'm just enough."

Niall cringes at Harry's scent of self-pride; it's acrid. Niall mimes Liam's motion and jabs his finger into Harry's braid, messing with the intricate weaving, and says, "You look like an extra in _The Lord of the Rings_."

Liam chortles and pats Niall's head, "I'm surprised you even remember those movies," and he points at the glasses next to the margarita machine, "don't forget the limes."

Niall has to use the child's stool to reach the Whiskey on the glass shelves, but it was a Sunday, so no one but his mates are there to witness the embarrassing process. Niall worked as a bartender from ten at night to three in the morning at a bar with a Romanized Korean name that no one could pronounce. Those hours were for consoling broken souls, making words out of shudders and inhales of deep smoke, making art out of the crop circles of ash that sat in the carpeted floor, those hours were for curling toes and goosebumps of dreams. The bar he worked at wasn't an average bar, it was a bar for middle-aged people that were sickly rich in money or rich in marijuana; smoking was allowed, as it seemed everyone, but Niall, did.

As Niall puts the limes on a plate, one orange slice ending up on the plate; he re-reads the headlines of the paper, returning his train of though onto the newspaper. He misses the disgusted sound Liam made as he bit into the orange slice.

" _Zayn Malik of 71G has yet again caused another dilemma. With his supposedly called 'Million Rainstorm,' he's managed to cause almost two miles of traffic on the main intersection. Cars were hazardously parked and bunches of crazed fans - or bystanders - crowded at the base of Zayn's balcony as he released handfuls of euros into the open street. Zayn has no apparent motive for this yearly ritual. Zayn Malik has yet to be charged for civil disruption._ "

"My neighbor throws out money?"

Harry smiles and flicks shaved ice into Niall's hair, admiring the neon colours melting into the blond fluff, "Yes, yes he does."

Liam's, too busy spitting into a napkin to respond with a snarky comment. Niall hits the back of Harry's head when ice slides under his uniform, "Don't you have another person's body to permanently mess up?"

Harry wails loudly and points wildly at his ink, "These are not permanent mistakes!"

"Yeah because mermaids are really meaningful."

Niall whacks Liam over the head with the newspaper,"You can't say anything either!"

Liam squirts lime juice into his eyes angrily, and laughs loudly at the pained noises Niall makes, "I hate oranges."

Niall worriedly rubs at his watering eyes, "How would I remember that? You twat!"

Liam smiles sweetly, "It's in your memory book, right next to 'Fuck You.'"

Niall's about to smack Liam over the head with his newspaper when Harry vomits over the multicoloured wires. The scent of stomach acid and cheap beer makes Niall cringe.

He quickly grabs a rag, steps over the vomit seeping into shaved ice, and hands Harry the rag. Harry's reached his limit again. Before Harry can faint and injure himself, he hands the lanky body over to Liam as he dials Harry's girlfriend's number.

"Taylor?"

She sighs heavily over the end; Niall can hear her frown, "I'll be over there; is he vomiting again?"

"Yes."

"I don't know how much I can take anymore."

Niall nods as Harry convulses and drops his beer to the ground, "Be gentle, please."

Taylor doesn't respond, all Niall hears is the rumble of a growing engine, and then she hangs up the phone.

— _

Niall's got a new box of tea, the expiration date months away from the current date, and he's got Louis' number in his phone.

"Hello?"

"Niall-"

"Mrs. Tomlinson?"

Niall hears Louis' mother cringe over the phone at the last name, had he said it wrong?

"Yes, Niall. What are you calling for?"

"Is Louis over? I'd like to have tea with him, it's his favorite, I got-"

He hears Louis' mother audibly break over the phone. She began screaming and wailing on the other end of the phone, her voice full of an emotion Niall can't shape.

"He's dead, Niall! He's fucking dead! Stop calling me, I don't need the reminder! Louis Tomlinson is dead!"

She was heaving, still screaming at him, and all Niall could do was stand there, open box of tea on the floor. Her voice wavered, her words were frail and cracking she sounded tired, so, so tired.

"How- how long have I been calling you?"

"Ever since the accident. You called me a week ago."

Niall gasped into the phone, he repeated on instinct in a mantra, "I'm sorry!"

"Niall, stop calling. Louis died in the accident with you. He's dead."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry for yelling."

"I'm sorry."

__ _


	3. ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Sorrowful Middle  
> Character Count: 5,893

It's the cruelest month: March. It's the last day, the most barren and venom-induced.

Niall knew Zayn was coming over, he had written the day before.

"Hey, Ni-"

"How long?"

Zayn stopped in the doorway, "How long what?"

" _How long_ have you been visiting me?"

Zayn taps his chin as he lit a cigarette, "Over a month now, I don't know."

Niall clenches his teeth, _Why didn't he write it down?_ The memory book was clutched in his hands, veins pulsing under his milky skin. His mind was racing, thoughts of anger and embarrassment ran perilously about. He heaves when he thinks back to the conversation.

Niall drops the journal as he twitches; the work he'd put so much effort into threatening to fall apart under the soft _thud_. He's so exhausted today. His bones ache and his ribs cut into his lungs and he can't breathe and everything _hurts, spins, hurts, spins_. He doesn't realize that he's hyperventilating until Zayn says heavily, fingers reaching nervously for him, "Niall. Calm down."

"Don't tell me to calm down," his hands wave anxiously in the air; his hands run with a trill. "I-I need to figure this out. Why didn't I know?" Niall asks Zayn, eyes wider than usual.

"Figure what out?" Zayn questions, but Niall begins to fumble his words and worriedly scrambles to pick the journal up. Zayn shifts slightly as Niall holds onto the journal like it's his lifeline.

"Louis, he-I-I tried to find him- says here," he flips open the book and points to a weathered page, face in the glossed photo barely distinguishable from too many oily fingerprints, "says here that he moved away. See, it says his number isn't in use anymore. But Louis was my primary school friend. Best friend. I just- I really wanted to know why he moved. Where he moved to. All I wanted to do was patch things up in case we had a fight. I wanted to invite him over for tea, something we'd always do.

"So I called his mum, and I could remember how she hugged me during graduation and told me that I'm just like a son to her, and that I'm much better behaved than Louis, and that if I ever need some motherly advice I should go to her- and Louis had shrieked so loud and everyone was laughing and it- but when I called today she just . . . it was still her, but she sounded . . . she was so . . . tired. Frustrated. Zayn, she was _sick of me_."

"No," Zayn blanches; humor still tingling in his voice, "You didn't really ask for Louis, did you?"

"And she screamed at me, said to never call her again, and then she _apologized_. To me. Because she couldn't even blame me for calling her to remind her that Louis Tomlinson, her son, was _dead_. That he was killed in the same accident as me. That I was the one who survived instead of him."

"Listen, Ni, it's really not your fault-"

"How many times have I done this, Zayn? How many times did I have to call her and ask her about where her dead son went? Zayn _what was I doing?_ Why didn't anyone just . . . why didn't I write it down? Why?"

Zayn doesn't answer. He shifts, barely, and slumps against the doorway.

"Did you know about this?" Niall asks, finally after the seconds have stumbled into minutes, and his nerves erupt into a frantic shout when Zayn fails to answer again, "You knew about this, didn't you? Why would you let me do _this?"_  


The sweet trickle of anger and astonishment seeps into his skin and tingles his vocal cords.

"Can you look in the mirror every day, Niall, and say that you're different? That you're different from billions of harsh bags of flesh and bone on this planet."

Niall flinches.

Zayn sits down his journal, ash falling loosely from the cigarette, "It's miserable isn't it?"

Niall lets a mere second of confusion cross his face, "What?"

Zayn doesn't do anything, all he does is drop his cigarette into his beer glass, and Niall wonders what nicotine, ash, and fizzing wheat tastes like fused together. Momo is sitting the far corner, ears bent back and eyes wide from the frantic screaming. "It doesn't matter," Zayn whispers as he takes another sip, the condensation on the glass making his grip loose. Niall moves in front of Zayn, "What is it?"

"This conversation is about Louis-"

Heavy guilt, and maybe a little rage, precipitates from the dampness in his palms, "This conversation is about _us_."

Zayn smiles bitterly, "I'll tell you what makes me so miserable."

Zayn sounds defensive now, his calmness masked in stony words and harsh emphasis.

"I have idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, meaning my lungs are scarred and tearing; it's like God's shredding me into pieces for an unknown cause, not giving a shit. But why do I smoke you may ask."

Niall makes a sound of protest, but it avails useless because Zayn continues to fulminate.

"I smoke to make the process of death quicker, that way I don't have to suffer any longer than I already do."

Niall opens his mouth to apologize sincerely, but Zayn stops him, "Don't apologize. It's sad - _so fucking sad_ \- when people pity the sick because life is full of _it_. You think you're escaping _it_ until you finally run into yourself. It's fucking miserable; I'm fucking miserable because the shortest way is the longest way home, and I don't want to go home. I've been running in circles since the get-go, and it's a fucking riot."

There's a punch of dry laughter to emphasize the monochromatic anger he's slowly sizzling in. It's like a horrid masterpiece of emotions and twisted thoughts that no one can determine the cause of, and then there's silence. The air is filled with dog hair, no words spoken between the two. It's a subtle silence, not as awkward as it should be, but not as consoling as Niall would like it to be. Zayn lights another cigarette takes another sip of his ash and Nicotine beer, his anger miraculously diminishing and says, "Tell me about your accident."

_Niall cringed inwardly as Louis heaved again, the sound of chunky liquid splattering in large amounts on the sidewalk ringing in his ears. It was disturbing, but pitying to see the older boy puke up all of the drunken emotions and alcoholic liquids._

_Niall thinks stomach acid and beer smells terrible infused together._

_"Louis, we need to get you home. You need to-"_

_Louis raised his head, vexation igniting in his eyes. He wiped the yellow coloured liquid and dribble off his bottom lip, "No, I don't want to go home to her." Niall rubbed his eyebrow, and shivered at the temperature outside, "Louis, it's fucking below zero degrees out here, we need to go home." Louis didn't answer, he just stared back at Niall._

_His eyes were penetrating, yet empty. It was like he was staring at a desert, trying to determine if snow would fall. Puffs of air left Louis parted lips in thin streaks of white clouds.His breathing was heavy again, but his eyes continued to flicker from his eyes to his lips. Louis raised a finger and pointed to Niall's lips, but before he could make a remark, Louis' cheeks bubbled. Niall shrieked and jumped away as another stream of vomit left his lips._

_Niall felt like vomiting at the visual and auditory Louis was building for him._

_Louis stood shakily and drunkenly laughed, "You sh'ld of seen y'ur face." Niall weakly smiled and drug Louis by his shoulder towards the parking lot a few blocks down from the bar. Louis hiccuped angrily and tried to remove Niall's hand from his shoulder, "N-" hiccup, "no, don't - hic - take me to the caaa-" Louis stopped talking, 'ah' leaving his mouth without stopping as he gripped Niall's hand in his, "I'm not even - hic - straight, Ni." Niall nodded and pulled his jacket closer with his free hand, "Tell her." Louis flailed his arms around, taking Niall's arm with his random movements, "Are you stoopid? That's the whole poiiint. Ellie and I are married, I can't - hic - break her itty-bitty heart." Niall could hear the sarcasm and sincerity glazed over his intoxicated words, "Who hiccups when they're drunk?" Louis ignores his question._

_"Eleanor and I are - hic- hitched for life. I can't break that prooomise."_

_Niall nodded as he buckled Louis in the passenger seat, "Not telling her will break her heart though." Louis slapped Niall's side, squeezing a bit of the fat there in the process, "But boys have better than curves than heeeer," he squeezed Niall's thigh for emphasis, "like you." Niall gently removed Louis' hand, "Tell her that when we get home you home."_

_Louis whined loudly in the passenger seat, hands slapping the steam covered window, "But I can't." Niall ignored him as he pulled out of the empty parking lot, hands smearing the steam on the window, "Louis, make yourself useful and wipe away the steam; I can't see shite." Louis complied for the moment; he leaned forward with sweater paws and wiped away the steam._

_The mist was heavy on the roads, hauntingly hanging over the asphalt. The air was cold and bitter, almost icy with each inhale. Niall usually enjoyed the weather, but with Louis constantly rolling down the window and letting in cold bursts of air was unbearable. Niall presses the child lock on the windows as Louis leans his forehead on his arm sadly, "You know what?"_

_"What?"_

  
_Louis laughs loudly, "I'm not even fucking straight, but I'm married to a woman, a child on the way."Niall tries to listen as he attempts to point out black ice, "but I really -_ **_really_ ** _\- like you, Ni." Niall nods as he dangerously swerves around a patch of black ice; the sound of Louis' head smacking against the window causes him to chortle. Louis giggled to himself and places his hands on Niall's thighs, alarming the younger boy, "I really like you." Niall ignores Louis' large palms, hands tightening on the wheel, "Louis, stop."_   


_Louis bends over his seat and tries to unbuckle himself to pull the restraint off, "I'm gonna make you feel so good." Niall hits Louis hands off and looks down momentarily at Louis' unreadable eyes, "Stop it, Lou." Louis only takes this as a fuel for moving forward. Louis aims for Niall's crotch, lips puffed and blowing air, but the short gusts hit the seat instead. Niall closes his legs tightly and uses one hand to push Louis' face back, "Louis, I need to focus." Louis kisses his fingers and smiles against his palm, "I'll make you feel like you're on cloud- cloud . . . . cloud twelve." Niall laughs at his mistake and looks down at Louis' hooded eyelids, "Stop trying to seduce me, you tw-"_

_Niall hears the audible bump and screech of the tires. Before he can take control of the wheel; his car is swerving over a long patch of black ice, and into the other section of the interstate. Niall's gritting his teeth and trying to change gears all while trying to turn the wheels onto its right path.All he hears is Louis' frantic screaming in the short-lived seconds._

_Niall gets the wheels on path right before they hit the safety guards, but his victory is short lived as the tires continue to push forward on the asphalt._

_A truck is heading towards them full speed; they're both stuck on the same patch of black ice._

_All Niall remembers is how oddly warm the asphalt was compared to the cold air, the horrid smell of burnt tires and exhaust, and a scent of smashed strawberries. He can feel the busted strawberry crates and tears of rubber from the tires around his body. He can only hear the sirens, can't see the warm colours. His vision is momentarily impaired, everything is a blur of dark, dark crimson; he doesn't know what's happening from the dazed state he's in._

_His senses are overwhelmed with rushed voices; frantic questions of "Where are they?" being heard. His hands graze the ground to find purchase on something, but all he finds are ruined strawberries. When his vision returns to his eyes, he sees Louis staring back at him, breathing slow and eyes hooded. Louis' head is crowned with strawberries, and he finally sees the men and women rushing towards them._

_"It wasn't your fault." Louis whispers to him as his sober state returns._

_"It wasn't your fault, Niall."_

"I haven't eaten strawberries since."

— _

**_April_ **

It's probably their fiftieth meeting, and Zayn is still drinking cigarette infused beer.

Zayn is nodding; Niall can't read the words he's scribbling down.

"What happened to Louis?"

Niall wipes his eyes, "He died two days after in the hospital; the day of the accident impaired my memory, so I don't remember anything past it. I think he's survived, but I don't know what terms we're on."

"Convenient. You don't remember death; that's really helpful." Zayn quips, almost impulsively.

"Are you angry?"

Zayn shakes his head, "How does it feel to be perpetually twenty-one?"

"Good."

"How is it good? You're stuck in time, seconds and hours passing you by, the world diminishing before your eyes, and you're left there to watch your friends and family die. But when you wake up it'll all be gone. _Gone_ like your memories of me. When you wake up in the mornings, everything will be fucking fine and dandy like it always is."

"Zayn, what's wrong?"

Momo has left the room, his presence no longer there to relieve the tension that's been made. Zayn's eyebrows are knit together, like he's about to cry, but his eyes are stark of any remorse or despair. Niall can see the pain hidden behind his glasses. Zayn's only scribbling a continuous line on his paper now.

"Nothing's wrong."

"Tell me."

Zayn makes a sound to retort, a modest snapping sound, and he almost snaps his pen in half. Zayn's eyes are tired, but the furious gleam in them are reborn and healthy in youth.

"It's all about eyes and hands."

"Eyes and-"

"It's all about you looking at me with your white eyes, looking into my dark ones. It's all about your crystalline hands wrapping around my cracked neck; venom seeping out of the jagged openings and coating your pure ones. It's all about your clean eyes looking into my befouled ones. It's all about fists breaking thin glass; eyes penetrating barriers. I've got everything to lose, and you're a free spirit."

Niall notices how frigid Zayn's stature has gotten, and how his voice has raised. Momo has returned, his lips raised in a threatening manner at the danger in the air.

"I've got nothing to lose, but my memories of you."

Zayn stops drawing his line, and snaps his pen this time, ink rolling down his fingers, "That's the fucking point, Niall. I'm dying. I'll be dead in a year, maybe a month, but it doesn't matter because you won't remember. We've been speaking for four months, and you don't remember anything. I have to introduce myself to you everyday. You don't remember anything about me, about our conversation yesterday.

"You won't remember me when I die, you won't remember anything about me. I bet you won't even remember the fact that this is all for a book; you won't even remember this moment right here. You won't be lonely, you won't feel empty, and that's what fucking hurts the most: you won't remember loving me when I die.

"And nothing's sadder than the death of an illusion, and that's all I am to you, an _illusion_ , a fragment of imagination of a neighbor, nothing more. And I'm just going to go _poof_ , and you won't notice it. I'll just be another one of your forgotten pages."

Niall is silent, and he reaches for Zayn's hand, but he flinches and pulls his hand away, the ink on his course fingers almost dry, "I don't want you to go _poof_."

Zayn snorts dismissively, almost snarling _you're just saying that._ , but he wasn't just saying that. Niall's voice had cracked, the vocal cords wavering and sounds waves cracking in embarrassing places. For the first time since Niall's heart can remember, he actually cares about someone, but this person is broken beyond repair.

Niall does something that he only knows as comfort: he kisses Zayn.

The kiss is all tongue and clashing teeth. Anger and sorrow wrapped up hazardously in bitten tongues and bruised lips.

The night is all about Zayn's ink covered fingers on his pale, exposed thighs, leaving his fingerprints of loops and arches on the insides of them. The night is filled with two contrasting souls, pastel and crude oil, intertwining as one. The night is full of pleas and moans.

Niall doesn't know if this is his first time, he thinks it is, but when they're done all Niall can do is apologize, and he feels Zayn's anger return.

When they're done, and Zayn's asleep, Niall writes " **DEAD** " in large letters above Louis', too happy face.

— _

Zayn's gone in the morning, but Niall doesn't notice.

— _

When Niall opens his front door on a Saturday, he finds a folded piece of construction paper tapped to his door.

" _Pity is fucking worthless from someone who can't even remember to care._ "

Niall doesn't know why he's received this blatant message, but the pang of emptiness in his heart is loud. Momo whines and scuttles towards Niall as he rereads the note over and over again, confusion and pain reverberating in his chest. He's left with a sour taste of something more resenting than loss, and more regretful than a mistake.

Albeit Niall doesn't know it, but he should remember Zayn's presence last night. He should remember the frosted fingertips and ink smudges, the late night sessions between the sheets, the mantras of _sorry_ 's that he let out; he should remember everything they did that night, but he doesn't. He doesn't remember anything, but the pain he's feeling at the moment.

He blames it on his head.

— _

Niall calls in sick on Sunday; refuses to leave his complex because even if he doesn't remember what he felt yesterday, he still feels the nagging resentment under his skin. He really can't deal with having to call Taylor again for the umpteenth time to pick Harry up, or to deal with Liam's heat strokes.

Niall calls all of the people in his memory book, skipping Louis' name, and asks if he's done something to make them take their precious time to tape a note on his door, but they all say no.

Zayn doesn't answer his phone.

He's sitting in the red arm-chair, fluffing the dust out of the pillows when his hand finds a journal. It's a tight-leather book, a few cuts on the face, and Zayn's name carved in the surface, barely recognizable. The pages are cut neat, not one page jutting out of the others, but there's a fold on the top corner of one page.

Niall turns to the designated page, not expecting to find anything special. When the pages is opened, he finds clippings. Clippings of newspaper articles and records; all of them are about him. At first Niall thinks he's got a stalker, but he remembers seeing Zayn's name on it, so his first reaction is to flip through his memory book and see what he's written in under his name.

**_Zayn Malik:_ **

_Neighbor; smokes; author; sad smile._

_Wants to write a book about you._

_Carries around two pens._

_Has a lung disease; is dying._

_Doesn't want pity._

He reads the updates he's written underneath Zayn's name, and figures that maybe this is the person who's mildly upset with him. Niall sighs with relief that it is not a stalker, but rather his neighbor who he seems to know well. When Niall stands to retrieve his phone to call Zayn again, there's a knock on the door.

Momo takes his stance and begins to growl at the door, but Niall hushes him as usual.

It's Zayn.

Zayn is fiddling with his thumbs, a drugstore bag in his right hand. Niall opens his door, and Zayn's head flies up, and he gives that smile again, but it seems to be out of worry. Niall and his amnesia fail to notice a difference.

"Hey, Ni. I came over to apologize, but since you don't remember I don't think I need to, but-"

"You're Zayn right?"

Zayn almost looks ecstatic that Niall remembered him this time, but all he does is hand Niall something from his bag: a pad of yellow sticky-notes. Niall rubs the paper, "Why sticky-notes?"

Zayn doesn't answer, he pats Momo's head, hugs Niall, and walks down the corridor to his door.

"Bye, Ni."

Instead of making dreams come true, Niall is at home on a Sunday at eleven writing in his memory book.

**_Zayn Malik:_ **

_Neighbor; smokes; author; sad smile._

_Wants to write a book about you._

_Carries around two pens._

_Has a lung disease; is dying._

_Doesn't want pity._

_Gave you yellow sticky notes._

The rest of his Sunday is spent feeding Momo bits of his chicken fingers and flipping through his new pad of sticky notes; energy high.

— _

Niall, and Zayn, figure out that his subconscious memory is still relatively functional a week after their anniversary of interviews.

Niall's trudging up the steps, ignoring the man in the silk-red tie again, whose arrow tattoos and brown eyes and sweat stains seem familiar; he ends up passing Zayn on the steps, although he doesn't know his name, yet.

Niall sees the sharp jaw line, and he recognizes the peace sign tattoo near his wrist; he stops in his place on the stairs and stares long and hard at Zayn who only glances at him. Niall tries to analyze the creases in his cheeks, the eyelashes reaching up towards his eyebrows, his seemingly chapped lips, and jagged ribs, but a name doesn't seem to appear in the heavy fog in his head. Niall reaches for Zayn's wrist, and pulls him back off the seventh step and onto the fourth to look down at Niall.

"Do I know you from somewhere?"

Zayn visibly flinches, and then he grabs Niall's cheeks in his hands, and smiles widely. Niall notices that his smile is brighter, more authentic and cheerful.

"You remember me."

"I don't remember you, I recognize you."

Zayn doesn't stop smiling, he continues to ascend from the fourth step to the ground level, close to Niall's face, and looks down at him.

"You _recognize_ me!"

Niall smiles back at Zayn because his smile is infectious when it's personal. Niall doesn't have enough time to catch his breath when Zayn kisses him with all the effort he can muster, but Niall doesn't pull away. The way their lips mold and fit and fill in the hallow spaces seems - _feels_ \- too perfect to have been a first. Niall places his hands at the base of Zayn's neck because it seems like the only right place, and Zayn's hands hold his hips perfectly.

Zayn pulls back with a loud heave, the shuddering of his torso visible and rattling against Niall's own.

"I'm Zayn, your boyfriend."

Niall doesn't remember having a boyfriend, but that could be because he's lost his memory book.

"I'm sorry, I don't remember you. The sticky-notes in my house tell me that I have a memory book, but I've lost it."

Zayn takes his hand in his and pulls him up the steps, "Let's find it, okay?"

Niall nods and follows after Zayn, his head blocking out the sun peering in from the window on the stairs, and almost falls backwards.

"I have your notebook in my house! I was going to find Zayn, but I couldn't remember who it was, but I've found you!"

Zayn pulls Niall into the seventh floor corridor and whispers, "We'll interview about this, I promise, but I just need to hold you for a few more seconds."

They've updated Niall's - found - memory book, _Boyfriend_ being written in happy letters under Zayn's picture. Instead of sitting in opposite chairs, Niall is in Zayn's lap in the red chair, his notebook in hands. Niall's tracing the tattoos on Zayn's skin adoringly when he asks, "Is this the first time I've touched your tattoos?" Zayn rubs Niall's pinky in between his forefinger and thumb before clicking his tongue and responding.

"Technically, you're not touching them because the needle transplants the ink under my skin, so you're only tracing the patterns."

Niall hits his arm, "You didn't answer my question."

"No, this isn't your first time tracing my tattoos. You did that the night after we had se-" Zayn chokes mid-air when Niall accidentally elbows him in the gut, "I'm not a virgin?!" Zayn tightens his grip around Niall's waist as he clutches his gut and heaves idiotically.

"How about instead of talking about this topic, we get a little interviewing done, yea?"

Niall cranes around and looks back at Zayn, "Not in here."

__ _

They somehow end up on the roof of their building because Zayn happens to - suspiciously - own a pair of bolt cutters, and Niall knows how to get past the security desk, which is a mystery to both of them as of how he remembers each stealthy move.

The open air is much different than Zayn's white-washed box of an apartment. His table was always covered in cigarettes and dull coloured pills and crumpled balls of paper wavering on the edges like surrender flags over the empty beer cans and bottles. It's slightly refreshing.

"Do you have a favorite movie or show that you write down on a sticky note to re-watch it?"

Niall nods as the city below them hustles, "Yeah. I re-watch _The Avenger's_ , as I'm guessing, a lot."

"Have you ever lost your notebook?"

"Today, yes, but in the past, I don't know."

"How does it feel to fall asleep at night, knowing that you're going to forget everything that happened that day?"

"Ever since the accident, I've been diagnosed with a minor condition of anhedonia, or I don't have the ability to feel hopeful, sad, angry, it's all blank space, but when I wake up in the mornings it's like I'm a whole new person, and it doesn't really bother me. Although, it's a bit dehumanizing."

Zayn falls quiet as the wind wisps through his hair and ruffles the second pen he has tucked by his ear. Niall leans over the railing, and he looks down at the people lost in the crowds and ground down buildings. They push and shove against the masses, heads down and feet fast. The buildings are onyx coloured, no emotion painted in them, all but the little streaks of rainbow-coloured luminescent catching in the windows. Cracks etch up the corners, and it looks like the bomb of eternity has blown up and shroud the buildings in poverty. The starts are heavy and dull all at once, the golden lights of the city are fading them. Everything comes to a gridlock as the billions of constellations of stars twinkle and heat their hearts.

"Zayn?"

The wind purrs in his left ear and the city sounds blare in his right ear.

"Yeah?"

Niall wants to remember Zayn glistening in his sky - bright, unyielding, ineliminable.

"What happens when you forget a thought?"

It's a ridiculous wish because all Zayn is in Niall's sky of few stars is a dull, mere, ephemeral star.

"It dies."

Niall flinches and curls his fingers over the rough concrete railing. Tears threaten to cascade from his sparkling eyes, but he doesn't allow the weakness to show in his windows. Emptiness pangs in his vulnerable chest.

Zayn somehow ends up standing next to him, pens behind his ear and journal tucked under his arm. Zayn's got his twentieth-something cigarette lit in his lips. Zayn inhales summer, but exhales toxins. They watch the ash and smoke spiral down to the city streets, carried by a breeze down ten floors. They're both looking up at the sky, frowning at the clouds that are covering the seas of pinpointed happiness, and Niall remembers something that was written in his memory book.

"Zayn?"

"Yeah?"

"Why'd you give me yellow sticky notes?"

Zayn smiles to himself, eyes focused ahead on the building facing them. He's staring at Niall's small frame in the windows meters away from the roof they're standing on, mirth and love wrapped around white teeth and chapped lips.

"I gave you yellow sticky notes because you don't deserve to see stark skies. You deserve to see stars of memories that should last for thousands of years with you."

Niall smiles weakly and grabs Zayn's larger, much more calloused hand and rubs his knuckles, feeling every dip in the bone structures. It feels like this moment could last for eternity, but Niall and Zayn know that's not going to happen.

"I don't want to forget you, Zayn. I want to remember you."

Zayn rubs his hand back, admiring the smooth skin under his, and listens to Niall speak.

"All I want to ask for is just a few more seconds, a few more hours, just a _day_ where I remember you."

The air is cold, and that's usual weather for England, but it's June. Niall feels like letting the tears loose, letting go of his frigid stature, and embracing the pigment of imagination where he remembers everyone he's met in his life after his accident.

All Zayn does is kiss him, and whispers in his ear, "Those yellow sticky notes will be _our_ shared memories."

Clumps of large snowflakes begin to drift down from the dark-grey bundles of clouds that covered the stars, but they didn't stop to admire the fact that it was snowing in the midst of Summer, they continued to kiss under the infinite stars, trying desperately to make Niall's memory last.

"Why do you like stars so much?"

"They remind me that I'm living."

Niall watches the moon pop out of the sky, white and grey in one area against a black sky. Pinpoints of white drifting down from the sky, almost like the stars were falling from their infinite confinement.

"Zayn, I think I love you."

"When this world is no more, the moon the only thing we'll see, I let you love me."

"Say something to encourage me."

"I'll ask you to fly away with me."

Niall doesn't understand what he's saying.

__ _

Niall gives Zayn a spare key to his apartment.

— _

Zayn carries in the first morning of July and two grease-stained brown paper bags, throwing both carelessly across the tiny dining table in Niall's kitchen as he turns around to explain, "You gave me the key to your apartment yesterday."

"I know," Niall points to a note on the wall, except he thinks that he might have known even without the note. Everything about Zayn is new but familiar, abrupt but warm, in a way. Like something evasive to the mind but fossilized in the sap of the soul.

"How much do you know?" Zayn asks, while pulling eggs and milk out of the bags and helping himself with great familiarity around the kitchen.

"Your name is Zayn, you're my neighbor," Niall follows the beeline that Zayn makes from the cupboards to the dining room, "You're a novelist, and you have a sad smile, and you're always smoking because . . . because you're dy-"

The sound of paper ripping out of metal, as Zayn fetches the scrapbook from the kitchen counter, flips to the last page, and rips it out, is almost, too raw for the ear; Niall manages to save Zayn's picture. Niall falls silent and watches Zayn whip out a zippo and kindle a flame onto the sheet, "You don't need to know. I'm one of those pages that's going to be abandoned one day. It won't even be a pretty page. It'll be blood and tears over coursed paper and, honestly, it's better not to have a page of me at all."

"But-"

"Just forget it."

Zayn leaves apples out on the counter, and leaves Niall standing in the cold expanse of his apartment, Polaroid of Zayn in hands.

Niall secretly rewrites the page, dusts up the ashes and puts them in a jar. He does this not because he wants to remember Zayn from today, but because he wants the Niall tomorrow to know of the boy behind Zayn's sad smiles today. He wants the Niall tomorrow to know that behind the Zayn who ghosts along cigarette stubs, who tosses back pills with glasses of milk, is a Zayn who can laugh with his whole face and body and is sensitive and kind. A Zayn who puts his beanies on backwards with the tag on his forehead and lifts Niall up in the air. He's a child with an old man's scars, the gentlest romanticist hiding within a shell of hard cynicism.

The words he writes come out on their own, wishes at the end of every stroke, and Niall thinks that they're more representative than any picture could be of that rare flicker of stardust in Zayn's eyes. Of the way he calls him Ni. Of the way he puts beanies on Niall's head backwards and points out how they match. Of the way he reminds Niall, sadly, that they're boyfriends.

_Is dying; doesn't want to be reminded._

— _


	4. iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Passable Ending  
> Character Count: 8,080

Niall wakes up, starchy linens fanned over him. They're light and fluttering above his body, almost hovering as if being suspended by something else. Niall's still shaking from the open window that's letting in the snow-filled air, and then it dawns on him. There's a bare chest that's placed behind his back, defined arms around his waist and midsection. Their shoulder is keeping the linens off his body, but their warmth is radiating and eerily comforting.

Niall _screams_.

Before the body can react, Niall's pulling the sheets off his body and running to the far corner of his room, eyes wide and doe-like. Momo is awakened, peaceful snores turning into a wild snarl instantaneously. The body sits up, shoulders broad, but torso lithe. His eyes are heavy with exhaustion, but when he sees Niall's trembling figure his eyes widen as the gears turn in his head.

"Niall, wait! You need to r-"

Niall points a finger at the man, eyes frightened and hand shaking, "Why are you in my room?"

The body frantically searches for something on the nightstand, mouth stalling with words of _Wait just a second_. Niall's reaching for his phone when the boy throws a book at Niall's feet, and he stutters in his steps. He gently picks the book up, thumbs rubbing the smooth cover, and when he opens the first page, he feels his heart break.

_Louis' dead._

As he reads on, his heart shatters even more, how could he not remember his own partner?

Zayn is there, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and pulling him close. The protective boundary of linens is dropped and pooled around his feet. Niall's going to apologize, but he reads the _Doesn't want pity._ part and closes his open mouth.

Zayn holds him tighter when Niall collapses to his knees, and he thinks momentarily that Zayn is crying, but it's replaced by the bitterly comforting scent of smoke.

"I don't want to lose you either, Zayn."

"Don't lecture me."

"Zayn, I just don't want to feel-"

"You said yourself that you can't feel. You can't - won't - understand pain, you didn't even remember who I was, so don't even assume what makes me weak or strong. Don't try to tell me what I can and can't do. Don't feel guilty because you're incapable of that, remember? What if you hurt someone yesterday? What if you pushed someone to their limits, Niall? You really don't know do you?"

"Zayn, I-"

Zayn doesn't answer; he stands angrily, cigarette falling out from between his teeth. The only response Niall gets is the scent of burnt embers and ash drifting into the singed cheap carpet.

— _

The man on the last page of his scrapbook is Zayn on certain days: a writer on others, and a stranger during brief elevator rides. On good days he has a smooth olive complexion; on bad days he wears jaundice on his flawless complexion like a punishment. Sometimes he is a boy sitting on the neighboring balcony, legs dangling off the ledge and cigarette hanging on parched lips, arms poking out from behind rusted bars. Sometimes he is the tired man leaning against the wall, drowning in the rain with drenched, matted hair and back hunched; the need to smoke overcoming the pouring rain. Sometimes they share quiet seconds in the corridors, others are countless hours speaking with heavy eyes over thick divides of indigo smoke and ringlets of grey. Occasionally it hurts to see him, makes Niall's chest throb with something heavier than pity, but most of the time seeing the man makes Niall's head light and dizzy. And, although Niall doesn't record the details, there is always _something_ when they come into contact. Every time their eyes catch, when they sprawl themselves out against the night sky, telltale grazes of knuckles between shallow breaths. It's something inexplicably warm, light, transient.

A little like open stars. The kind of something that lingers just long enough in his eyes only to disappear by the time he learns to want it. The kind of something that tells him this has happened before and that next time, too, but they'll fade from the rising sun before Niall can remember it. Slip between clouds and disperse into dull ash-blue skies of remorse and forgetfulness.

But this kind of _something_ is not romantic. _I love you._ are three words that are never said. They're, too definitive, too abrupt without motive. They're solid evidence, rationalized explanations, and that's, too quick of a response because at the end of each day sometimes Zayn is a stranger, sometimes Zayn is a book, but he is never more than a friend at the end of the day, despite the title of _boyfriend_. Time keeps them at arm's length, an invisible and impenetrable divide.

Days come and go, and Niall finds himself at the border of _Don't go._ and _Goodnight._ Of course, Niall is always dying to reach out and draw Zayn back in. He thinks that they've fit before, even though between them there is no entangling of legs or mazes of interlocked fingers. There is only the tsunami of scribbled information and the slow wave of words.

And, maybe, that's all they are.

With a tick of the second hand, he steps back into _Goodnight._ and midnight tears him to pieces, the sounds of screeching tires and choking exhaust washing away all his memories, ripping off pieces of his pigment of imagination and reality and sewing them back into a jumble of confusion.

Niall doesn't remember standing in the middle of his living room, a book in his hands, in the middle of the night. His first reaction is that he's home safely, along with Louis, but when he sees the book in his hands he halts the ease.

Niall realizes that the date's not what he thought it was, years and months have passed, the faces and pictures scratched out in his book are holding him captive in depression. The sound of laughter and euphoria fleeting from his subconscious. Pictures of people he knew in the past that are gone or dead are scratched out. Names, pictures, facts, everything is scratched out, but still readable.

He reads about Louis, he reads about his supposed best friend from secondary who commit suicide in January, he reads about his dad, he reads about every past person in his life, and he feels his sanity slowly deteriorating under the pressure of loss.

Niall's standing on his balcony, memory book in his hands and vacancy in his heart. The warm summer wind does nothing to rejuvenate his bones; he's left lifeless and cold on the inside. Niall doesn't realize he's hyperventilating until his neighbor peers his head over the thick concrete wall separating their balconies.

He's got a cigarette between his teeth, and his eyes are angry, but the way he's languidly exhaling glittery ghosts between his lips is contrasting. His voice emerges from the darkness, and it's soft, almost worried.

"What are you doing out here?"

The question is blunt, and it startles Niall. It's a flash of white in the dark, abandoned night of Niall's.

Niall clenches his hands around the book, the page that reads _Recent People_ is opened, but not touched. He opens his mouth and inhales the humid air, before closing his eyes and saying, "Counting all the people I've lost contact with."

The man flicks ashes off into the wind, "And?"

Niall laughs through his tears, not knowing he was crying until now, "There's a lot."

He doesn't realize that he's probably giving the man a pitiful smile, but the liquid desperation won't stop, and he feels like screaming and throwing the book off the balcony, but he _needs_ this book.

"What's wrong with that? People move on, people pass-"

"I knew these people yesterday; _I loved_ these people yesterday, and now- now they're dead? They've moved? Where have they all gone? Am I alone?"

The man lets his tenth cigarette of the day to drift to the open road below, "I won't live long enough to know."

The sparks burst at the impact and glitter the road in a short-lived brightness.

The words don't affect Niall, but he doesn't know how to respond. He watches the man light another cigarette before he disappears behind the thick wall again. Niall watches the smoke twirl in the air and up towards the sky, and he realizes that the stars are out tonight.

The constellations seem to align when Niall reads Zayn's page, and he shouts for Zayn, but when he pulls his head over the barrier, Zayn's gone.

— _

Niall wakes up the next morning, memory book in hand, and a regretful taste lingering on the tip of his tongue. His fingertips are littered in paper-cuts, and Momo's lying on the carpet, breath no longer entering and leaving the dog.

— _

**_August_ **

Zayn stops by to tell Niall about his failure in publishing the book; Niall asks him if he's seen a dog named Momo. Zayn's about to ask what's happened when Niall gaps loudly and flails around his chest, fingers clutching and releasing his t-shirt.

Zayn looms over his shoulders to see the yellow sticky note with the words **_Momo's dead._** written on the thin paper. Tears blot the ink in various places, and he doesn't miss the sticky note above the fire-place that has his name written on it.

**_Tell Zayn that you're sorry._ **

Zayn leaves the thin book on his coffee table.

— _

**_November_ **

"I'm a terrible, Godforsaken, human being."

Niall registers the man stepping into the elevator next to him. His eyes are bruised heavily with sleep deprivation of last night's over thinking, and his chest's elevations are painful to watch.

"I've hurt the person I love with my broad ego and attempts to remain strong, but I'm actually terrified, so fucking scared. I've blocked out every attempt that he's made to actually console me because I'm selfish and want the pity, want to know someone else is hurting that's not me, but I regret it so bad. I'm so fucking scared."

Niall reaches for his hand, and the man's bruises that once looked like wine stains on a white carpet disperse evenly into his skin. "You're just lost. It'll be okay."

The man's knuckles tighten as the elevator rocks, his breathing becomes uneven again. "No it won't, I'm dying, and I've desperately messed up my chances with a person that I love, but even if he doesn't remember it, I do. I'm afraid that I'll die without being with him, without being his eternal memory."

Niall's going to respond, but the man stops him.

"I'm a writer, and my life's been absorbed in this one person, but I've managed to fuck everything up with my temper because I don't want to feel weak." he pauses and wrings his sweaty hands together, and he glances between Niall and his hands. He almost reaches for Niall's cheek, but a doctor's note falls from his pockets, and he worriedly says, "Tell Niall that Zayn forgives him okay?"

Niall tries to speak up that he is Niall, but before he can, the man - which he assumes is Zayn - steps out onto the third floor in tears and disappears.

— _

It's a cold Tuesday night, summer and fall have passed, the dead leaves being replaced by crystalline structures and frostbit noses. The cold air fogs up his windows in bluffed circles, and Niall can barely see the blurs of the city lights from the mist.

He's writing down what's happened to him today when there's a knock on the door. Momo's not there, nor a replacement, to warn him.

Zayn's standing there, car keys in hands and a large smile on his face.

"I'm Z-"

"Zayn."

Zayn's smile falters; he dismisses the false hope of Niall finally remembering and says, "So you've read your notes today?'

Niall nods and lets him in, "Why are you here?"

Zayn's smile is almost insane looking, "We're going to see stars," he says with a childish glint of excitement in his eyes, "real ones."

__ _

They've ended up in Zayn's filthy-rich looking convertible, a treacherous thing, all black exteriors and hard, red interiors, stereo quietly playing in the background. The car speeds from lanky alleys and the shadows of skyscrapers to the grassy suburbs and insect orchestras, deep into the night. Somewhere along the lines Niall notices Zayn sticking his free arm out the side, dangling loosely off the window, and he finds the nerve to do the same. The wind rubs away the anxiety in his skin and exhales sparks into their hair. It's a small thrill, but big enough of one to make Niall's heart beat a tad faster. Niall begins singing, voice soft and distinct over the thrumming radio, and he knows that Zayn is watching how the invisible octaves and stanzas swirl behind his tongue. Ebbs and flows with the colour of his wandering melodies.

Instead of an old country field, they've parked in front of a run down barn.

"Where's the field?" Niall hesitantly asks as Zayn obscenely smiles. He says nothing and pull Niall out of the car and into the large structure. The door slams, the moonlight dims and peeks between the planks of the warehouse, and Niall loses his breath.

Thousands of fireflies are dancing and whizzing in the air. They glimmer endlessly in the open barn, no limit like the outstanding city lights to dull the attention-worthy clusters of extraordinarily light-dusted insects.

Zayn's attention is all focused on Niall.

He watches the way Niall's crystal eyes perfectly reflect the flawless balls of lights, his iris' emerging the white-yellow lights in deep blues and crystal golds. Zayn watches his pink lips open, allowing his mouth to go agape in awe and admiration. Zayn thinks this is the best thing yet.

"Niall?"

"Yeah?" Niall's voice is barely above a whisper, almost as if he's trying not to disturb the insects as he allows one to crawl up his finger and dive into the air.

"What's your best memory?"

Niall's got a lungful of open air and fireflies hidden in the crevices of his fingers, "We aren't interviewing anymore, remember? I thought I was the one with amnesia."

"No, I want to learn more about you, not the mentally disabled Niall, but the Niall that I love. I want to know what your first thought is when you wake up, what your favorite colour is, what your cold toes feel like against my calf in the morning, what your favorite memory is, what _you_ are."

Niall nods, a little breathless, and captures a group of insects in his tiny hands.

"My best memory was when I was younger, really, really young, about four or five. I remember my mum holding me, and I remember seeing my dad's red car sitting in the driveway. The last day he was home."

Zayn only nods, deciding it's best not to inquire about his dad, and compliments him instead, "You had a pretty vivid memory before the accident."

Niall nods, and grabs another handful of the crisp air and stars, "My favorite colour is blue."

"Are you ticklish?"

Niall nods nervously, and flinches slightly when Zayn's fingers press into the curve of his side, dangerously close to the sensitive patch of skin on his stomach. Zayn smiles devilishly, but Niall stops any evil plans he was mustering up.

"I'm ticklish there," Niall says as places his hand over Zayn's, "but your hand feels nice there. Like a guilty pleasure almost."

Zayn laughs a little, too loud for the peaceful scenic view, and his laughs turn into hacking and bellows of coughs that shake both of them. They're silent again as Zayn catches his breath, his chest rising quickly before dropping.

"Zayn, tell me about yourself again."

And Zayn does; he repaves Niall's roads of memory, fills in the hollow, fuzzy places of memories with vivid colours. He outweighs the bad with good, makes everything okay for once. Niall's breathless once again as he listens to Zayn talk about Zayn Malik, the man who throws millions of dollars out of his window and has sisters back home and enjoys singing.

"Zayn?"

"Yeah, Ni?"

"Will you sing for me tomorrow?"

"Why not now?"

The night is filled with fluttering notes and whispers. Zayn's heart is in every lyric as he sings along to a Frank Sinatra song that Niall's never heard. Niall listens as Zayn makes music out of gasps and shells of muted notes.

It's quiet after Zayn finishes, and he reaches around for something. This mystery is dissolved when he pulls out a jar and hands it to Niall with pride. Niall doesn't know what to do, so he stands there and twirls his finger over the lip of the jar. Zayn sighs heavily and begins to cram fireflies into the jar.

Clusters and clusters of tiny stars are shoved into the jar, and Niall admires the way they blink on their own accord. When a lid is placed over the contained fireflies, Zayn smiles and says, "Real stars last forever."

"What are you saying?" Niall laughs. He laughs even harder when he catches Zayn flushing from the neck up.

Zayn's answer begins with a stammer but disappears under a bout of fitful coughs and shaking, folded shoulders. There are beads of perspiration over his forehead. Somehow, it doesn't look right, but Zayn refuses to let Niall question him. Instead, he gets down on one knee, and Niall nearly drops the jar of fireflies.

"Will you marry me?"

__ _

That night when Niall returns home, goosebumps raised in his skin and hair dusted over with cold air and jar of fireflies, he sings a Frank Sinatra song before bed and plays with the silver band on his left ring finger, black sticky notes littered his wall with reminders of Zayn.

**_Say yes to Zayn._ **

— _

Autumn was harshly dead, and Niall, despite the fragments of last night lost, approaches Zayn with a toothy, flustered smile.

"Okay."

They get married on the rooftop of their building, a wedding with them, and them only, attending.

— _

Niall hadn't seen Zayn in a week, but the only reminder he got was in the newspaper.

" _Major catastrophic event occurred in the streets, causing metres of traffic. Author Zayn Malik has thrown out all of his money in the streets. No one knows what his reasoning was. Many suspect the young author's dying._ "

__ _

"Stop smoking."

England in the morning smells like frostbit earth, drenched windbreakers, and Zayn's smoke: Slightly unsettling.

Zayn doesn't answer, all he does is continue to exhale the ringlets of smoke, smiling carefully at each ring he's made with his tongue and nicotine addiction.

"Zayn, stop smoking."

"No." Zayn says defiantly as he lights another cigarette and puts it in his mouth next to the other occupying his mouth to prove his stance. He inhales, hacks loudly, and ends up spitting both cigarettes into the trash can next to him.

"Are you okay?"

"What do you mean?"

Niall points his finger to the drug bag next to Zayn's spot on the bed, "The pills - corticosteroid, methotrexate, acetylcysteine - the oxygen mask, the coughing. What's wrong? Is that a vomit container?"

Zayn looks away, and the white silence is the most unbearable sound he's ever heard. It drones in his ears and rattles his insides. Zayn's eyes look everywhere but into his, and that only fuels his suspicion.

"Zayn, what is-"

"My lungs."

Niall drops the bag of drugs, multicoloured pills bouncing and spreading on the carpet like faded confetti leaving traces of melancholia on the carpet.

"Is it fatal?"

Zayn doesn't answer, he just twirls a newly lit cigarette between his fingers.

"How many years?"

" _Days_." Zayn whispers between the cigarette. Niall's more strung up than the ashes that keep falling from the end of his cigarette. They burst with colour before fading into grey.

"What?"

_Lighting up._

"The doctor only says I have a few days left, but that's pretty long considering I've lived over twenty. I had a good run, did what I could. I even got fucking married."

_And fading._

"Zayn- _no_." Niall's voice breaks louder this time, a squeak replacing his swallow. His knees feel heavy and head light. Zayn inhales again, coughs, and then flicks the ash off.

_Lighting up._

"Stop smoking."

_And fading._

"What're you going to do about it? You won't even remember me tomorrow, it's not going to matter."

Niall crushes pills under his shoes as he storms over to Zayn's body, takes the cigarette, and glares deep into Zayn's eyes.

Zayn raises his eyebrow defiantly, face contorted into mockery as if saying W _hat are you going to do about it?_ Niall answers that question with prominent determination etched across his face.

"This is what I'm going to do."

_Lighting up._

He exits to Zayn's balcony, bag of his cigarettes and lighters in hand, and lit one in between his fingers. People crowding beneath his balcony think another Million Rainstorm will happen, but when they see Niall's tear-stained, porcelain face and Zayn rushing behind him, they all freeze.

_And fading._

Niall empties the bag of cigarettes and lighters onto the street below him. Packs of cigarettes and plastic bodies of lighters shatter from the impact and scatter cigarettes and plastic shards onto the people below them. Niall then turns to face Zayn, anger flaring in his watery eyes, and he puts the cigarette in between their faces. He flicks the ash off and shoves the cigarette into his mouth. The lit end sears through the flesh on his tongue, igniting and burning through every nerve on his tongue, making his eyes water, but he chews the paper and tobacco thoroughly before swallowing the horrid thing. He coughs up a bit of smoke and then looks at Zayn.

_Lighting up._

"Stop smoking."

_And fading._

— _

Zayn's state gets worse, but he insists that everything is fine, that he's fine.

The weeks pass, and Zayn begins to wake them both up at the peak of morning from coughing and vomiting up stomach acid. Niall stays up during those mornings, the constant fear thrumming in his chest is restless. He's left up when the sun doesn't give off slivers of hope or happiness.

And then Niall snaps.

Zayn finds him in the floor of his bathroom, hands balled in his hair and eyes stained crimson from the burning falls of tears.

"I'm OK, Niall. I'm O-"

Niall slams his hands down on the tile floor, anger in his face and slides away from Zayn. "No, you're not!"

Zayn's feeble, olive complexion is now pale and yellow, and he's started coughing up blood. The colour of rusted blood mixing with crystal water is tattooed behind Niall's eyelids.

"It's fine, Niall. I deserve it, I deserve it all."

"No you don't." Niall whispers, and he points a quaking finger at Zayn, "People always say that good things happen to good people, and that there's happiness in the world." Niall sobs loudly, "That the good-willed people who are loved _and_ love will receive it, and Zayn, I-I don't know why this is happening to _you.You_ don't deserve this.

"You are not OK. Don't tell me 'I'm OK.' or 'You're OK.' because we're not! We're fucking not."

Niall grows quiet, a mix between a whimper and a sob leaves his lips, "And once I know that, there's no turning back. There isn't any happiness anymore."

Zayn holds Niall, arms wrapped around his small, trembling frame, and lips pressed to the back of his head.

"At least not today there isn't."

— _

In the last seconds of Autumn, hours are always, too short and seconds, too long. The days are growing shorter, and though Niall can't say that he has any proof, trepidation gnaws at him with every sunset, and he can feel it lingering over him. Filling the creases of his skin, gliding down his spine, dribbling off his toes in pools.

A longing.

A fear of the sinking cold of winter, the rain without a beginning, the same hours that he knows he's passed once before.

And then night swarms in and paints everything blank.

— _

It's a harsh December, and the band on his ring finger never leaves his sight. It glistens like the snow on the rooftops and is the colour of Zayn's smoke.

It's everything he loves.

But, you see, happiness doesn't last forever when you can't remember yesterday, and Zayn and Niall learn that the hard way.

"Niall Horan?"

Niall's a young adult without the ability to recollect his thoughts; the phone call isn't expected, "Yes?"

"Your presence is needed immediately at Saints Hospice; Zayn Malik is requesting you."

Niall stutters in the midst of his reading, phone falling from his hands and book in his hands trembling.

_Is dying; doesn't want to be reminded._

All it takes is five seconds for Niall to run out his apartment, memory book still in hands, along with yellow sticky notes and a jar of fireflies.

— _

Niall's traumatized by the scents of strong chemicals and jabbering machines, but he's there for one person.

_Zayn._

His body is motionless, and his eyes look like battery-acid has been rubbed relentlessly into the edges, and nothing has been able to remove it. His ribs are showing even more; the hospital gown is restraining his ribs movement.

Niall's woken up twice to this picture, fear and complete confusion racing through his veins until reality hits him full speed and ripping him apart. His heart was hanging by a thin string. It was suspended perilously off the ground, and with one snap, his fragile organ would fall; nothing was there to catch the motionless heart and to keep it from shattering. Fear and Love had combined into a bullet and ricocheted, leaving behind broken fragments in his heart.

It was his third time waking up to the image, and he was still shaking from the trauma when Zayn opens his eyes slowly and grasps for Niall's hand.

"When I first heard I was going to die, I thought: Finally, thank you- but now, now, I just- I just want one more minute, one more millisecond- I want more time, with you, Ni . . . I haven't loved you yet. I'm not _done_." and his eyes close before Niall has a chance to grab his hand back and tell him that they have enough time. That there's no rush, that it'll be fine because he's going to go home and write all of this down: **_Zayn Malik:_** _West Wing; room one hundred forty-seven; Saints Hospice; take the taxi to the Southern entrance; we're not finished yet._ \- so that he can come back tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after.

But Zayn doesn't open his eyes again.

"Zayn," Niall weakly whispers, his voice wavering and cracking lightly. His tears were falling freely, the third time he's cried here, and his lip wobbling. He squeezes Zayn's hand, careful not to hurt the weakened boy, "You're okay; you're going to be okay."

They both want to believe that.

— _

The minutes and hours of the days pass by; Zayn's still immobile and hazardously breathing. The seconds are, too long and the minutes, too short, but the night still manages to creep in and paint every memory of Niall's a solid black of confusion and forgetfulness. A solid black of morbid mornings and afternoons spent watching your loved one die.

— _

"Why are you so upset?"

"I'm not."

"Yes you are."

Zayn sips angrily on his cup of water. Trickles of saliva and water run down the side of his mouth and he smears them away roughly with the back of his hand. He's upset, that much is clear Niall decides, or perhaps a little more than upset. Waiting patiently, Niall picks up the sound of Zayn heaving, sipping, swallowing, and hitching for air. But Zayn doesn't break out of the routine, only continues drinking faster and faster.

"Look, what did I do? Zayn, I want to have a relationship with you, but you can't be like this-"

"No, Ni. I can because we don't even _have_ a fucking relationship," Zayn suddenly snaps, brittle and cold, "And we're never going to have a relationship. You get it, don't you? You can keep trying, but you're never going to remember me. That's just the way it is."

Niall doesn't want to cry, but a quiet whimper cracks his poker-faced façade and screws everything up. Zayn grows angrier, "You don't even have a right to be upset. You wake up each morning and you're all fine and dandy but what about me?"

"I'm sorr-"

" _I'm in love with you_ , damn it, but I still have to introduce myself to you every fucking morning, and do you even understand how that _feels?_ No, you don't, because you don't actually love me. Without all my notes, _there is nothing_. There is actually - _exactly_ \- nothing. I'm really just a stranger to you, and this relationship is all just a play. It's just another novel. Fabrication. Everything. I'm not even writing a fucking novel, fuck, _I'm living it_."

After a long pause _I'm sorry._ unwinds eventually from one of them. Maybe both of them.

Zayn yells incoherently at Niall, frustrated tears running down his paled complexion. He grabs the jar of fireflies and sends it across the hospital room. The glass shatters, and dead fireflies fall to the floor; one rising from the mound and ghosting over Niall's finger.

That night Niall falls asleep to the visual of light fleeting from his vision.

— _

"What happens when a thought dies?"

Niall flinches at the question; he doesn't know.

"I don't know, Zayn. Away?"

"That's vague."

"I'm not an expert when it comes to creativity."

"Don't be vague."

Despite his condition, Zayn's still stubborn and sweetly twisted with his humor.

"It dies. The thought dies, Zayn."

Niall doesn't miss the happily broken smile Zayn cracks. "You remember."

Niall doesn't know what he's talking about; he only looks into Zayn's eyes for some kind of answer.

Zayn's eyes are worn despite the immense amounts of sleep he's been getting; the doctors say it's a miracle he's made it this long, and Niall doesn't want to be fed false hope and lies. He can tell how cold Zayn's mind is - _histhoughts_ \- because Zayn's always shivering, teeth clacking and sending ripples through the piles of blankets and thin body. Apart from the chills, he's still sweating immensely from the heat of fear and reality.

"What if I don't want to? Don't let me die, Ni. Promise me that you won't let me die; promise me that you won't let me be discarded and forgotten."

"That's inevitable, Zayn. You know it, too-"

"Niall, _please. Please,_ promise me you won't let me die."

"I promise, Zayn."

"Will you love me tomorrow?"

"I promise that I'll love you tomorrow, and all the days after that."

"Really?"

"My head may be sick, but my heart isn't."

Zayn grasps for Niall's hand, breathing labored; it looks like Zayn's ribs will collapse in and deprive him of air, "Just hold my hand while you can remember me."

"Why?"

"Because it feels like billions of tiny stars are being born and then dying in between the skin of your hand and my hand. I don't want you to forget that feeling. Do you feel it?"

Niall meekly answers:

"Yes."

"Don't forget me, okay?"

— _

"Night Ni," Zayn breathes, as they hook him to his daily dose of morphine. His eyes are beginning to flutter close, and Niall knows that he's clutching to his seconds when he says, "I love you."

"No, Zayn. Tell me that you'll see me tomorrow."

"Ni, I might not make . . . "

" _Just._ Tell. Me. That- that you, _you_ -," and Niall's voice falters all, too suddenly, words and thoughts collapsing at once. He remembers - but he actually doesn't, Zayn just tells him to - the way Zayn's feeble voice had sang so adeptly in his ears, so naturally, as if he was born for the single purpose only days earlier, and it all feels so surreal to this Zayn lying etherized under blankets and fluorescent lighting, this Zayn who will probably never sing again. He looks sorrowfully at Zayn with the tinge of fear in his eyes, ". . . tomorrow. Tomorrow."

Zayn puts his hand on Niall's neck, draws him a little closer, smudging Niall's tears with a thumb, "Okay. See you . . . "

The trickles of fluid dripping into his chilled veins take him away before he can provide the last word.

Zayn falls asleep, leaving Niall with fear reverberating in his chest.

— _

"At the last moments you begin . . . praying for things . . . will I make it for the summer? . . . Can we make spaghetti together? . . . "

"Do you want spaghetti? I can make it tonight, and-"

"And, then you want more . . . Will I make it . . . to kiss you under the mistletoe? And . . . will I make it . . . for New Years because I want, I want to get . . . drunk with, with _you_. Will I . . . make it for our birthdays? . . . I want to see . . . your eyes . . . when I lean, in- to . . . kiss you on New Years . . . show you . . . true stars . . ."

"Stop it, Zayn, you'll make it to all of them. We've already made it for the mistletoe, today," Niall insists, pointing to the wrapped boxes at the other end of the room, "We have Christmas. If we've gone through Christmas we can do New Years, too, and our birthdays, and I can show you my eyes right now if you-"

"And it's never enough, because . . . the more I have of . . . _you,_ the more I . . . realize that I'm still missing . . . so much of _you_ . . . of _us_. . ."

"We can celebrate it together," Niall interrupts, "we'll celebrate everything together, okay? Okay? Just, don't cry, Zayn."

"You're the one . . . crying, Ni."

"Shut up."

"I don't . . . want to die . . yet, Ni," Zayn chokes dryly, droplets of liquid rolling down the creases of his eyes. Niall isn't sure if they're Zayn's own tears that have rolled down his cheekbones, or the tears that are falling out of him.

— _

When Niall wakes up he finds a whole assortment of black, crumpled sticky notes in his pockets, littered in barely legible scribbles of pen and pencil. They're written by a practiced, albeit shaken hand, with lines spiraling and barely hanging on. He smooths the first note over his palm, carefully smothering away the wrinkles.

**_Do you think there is a God?_ **

**_If there's a God, do you think he'd give me some extra time? It doesn't have to be a lot. Just an extra week, or even day. Anything. I wouldn't mind an hour. A second. I want more time. I just want more time._ **

**_You're crying._ **

**_I should have stopped smoking earlier, huh?_ **

**_Stop being so brave, Ni._ **

The last note is yellow and, with edges fraying, corners dog-eared and fading, is clearly older than the other two. The handwriting is more determined, pressed down with so much force that the words are physically imprinted into the paper. However, it's still distinct enough for him to recognize: **_Don't forget me, okay?_**  


_— __

"Zayn?"

" . . . Yeah?"

Niall's looking out the hospital window, watching all the small people scurry across the worn sidewalk. The visual is almost sad to him.

The sky's a bleak colour of ashes of yesterday; no sign of simple-minded luck or hope etched in the blue swirls. Clouds are no where in sight, but the sky is a dulled colour, a colour Niall thinks his eyes copy when he looks at Zayn.

"Do you think I'll be at your funeral?"

Zayn's small chides of laughter is airy and dry, a hint of forced strength is evident.

"If . . . if I have one."

Niall watches as all the people shove past one another on the streets. It's not fair; it's not fair that they get to walk the streets healthily and live on in the constant cycle of cold hatred. That those millions of people have the right to take life for granted; they have the audacity to think they matter.

"Why wouldn't you have one?" Niall says back, voice small as he turns his head to look at Zayn.

His eyes are closed, a weak smile on his ashen lips. His skin matches the sidewalk and sky; colourless and cracked, no hope or luck dripping on his features. He cracks open one eye and looks over at Niall.

"It wouldn't . . . be imp- . . -ortant to . . . me, if my one attender didn't . . . didn't remember . . . . _me_."

Niall turns back to look out the single window, machinery playing as a monochromatic orchestra.

He just sits there, knees pulled up to his chest as Zayn withers in the hospital bed. The feeling that aches in his heart when Zayn hacks up blood again, he can tell by the wet cracking and tearing of his throat, is something more than fear and less than pain. Emptiness. When he looks back over to Zayn, his chest perilously plummeting and rising, the emptiness pangs in his chest.

Zayn's seconds are, too short.

— _

The hospital fountain water tastes like grimy windows; Niall finds it hard to swallow, thinking that the same taste reminds him of an ending performance, a melody shredding at its veins. And it reminds him all, too much of Zayn.

Zayn closes his eyes and places a full pad of written on yellow sticky notes, "When I die, hang these up in place of the black sticky notes."

"Why?"

Zayn turns to look at Niall, even if he doesn't know it, Zayn's repeating himself, "You- you don't deserve to . . . " and Niall's up on his feet, hands gathering the tight skin of Zayn's sunken in cheeks, "No. No! No!"

Zayn smiles up at him; his whole face moves this time, eyes squinting into crescents and teeth revealing the desperate emotion of happiness. The light is minimum in Zayn's eyes, and his breathing slows, "You . . . don't deserve to see- to see vacant skies."

"Zayn! Please, don't, _you_ . . . _please!_ "

"Just . . . c-close your eyes, N . . . Ni. It'll all be alright."

"Zayn, no! You can't do this to me, not now. I promised I wouldn't forget you, but I can't remember without you. Zayn, please. _Please!_ "

"Will- will you fly . . away wi- . . . with m- . . . "

"Zayn?!"

"Fly away with me? . . . "

Those words shatter his whole demeanor into millions of irreversible pieces, and Niall wonders as the monitor deadlines, and the skin of Zayn runs cold: _We were so close, Zayn. So close. Why'd you have to leave now?_  


__ _

**_Zain (Zayn) Javadd Malik:_ **

  
**_Time of Death:_ ** _Twenty-three Fifty-seven, 31 December 2014._   


— _

When Niall closes his eyes at night he imagines a warm, nameless body whispering words to him.

" _I'll be back, okay?_ "

When he closes his eyes he swears that he smells the sickly sweet scent of smoke burning in his nose, and the top of his tongue throbs in a swollen place. The skin there is tight, and he can't taste anything there.

He hears knocks at his door, and when he opens it, a boy that's much taller than him with ashen lips and defined ribs is standing there, shouting his name.

" _Niall! Niall!_ "

Niall doesn't know what to do, so he holds the boy and tells him that he'll catch the flu because of the lack of clothing, and all he does is chortle in his face and say: _Say my name. Say my name one last time._  


Niall doesn't know his name, doesn't recognize his face, and he leans down to search for his memory book from 2014, but the boy holds him close and refuses to let him go.

" _I'll be back tomorrow night._ "

— _

He finds his book the next day.

Harry's love for alcohol has taken a role, and he's died of alcohol poisoning, Liam's had a severe heat stroke making him unable to request whiskey anymore, Cher's disappeared, Luke's gotten fired, and Louis' dead. He finds one page that's been torn out, and discarded somewhere. He searches frantically for the note page when he finds a drug bag hidden beneath his bed.

There's broken pill remnants on the edges, and he thinks that he may have accidentally taken this from one of his neighbor's, but when he opens it, he finds the note page, a cigarette and lighter, a jar of ashes, and a disordered pad of yellow sticky notes.

__ _

When the boy appears at his doorstep again, lips even darker than before, he whispers again.

" _Do you like me?_ "

"I think so."

The boy grins, and his teeth are perfectly white and contrasted against his dark lips, his face is stationary and his lips are the only thing turned upwards. It's eerie, and recognizable all at the same time.

" _Say my name. Say my name one last time for me._ "

Niall feels the words form on his lips, and he remember the notebook page.

"Z- . . . ," the boy's smile widens, "Zayn."

The boy pulls him close and cries, weeps of _You remember me!_ leave his open mouth.

Niall offers him the cigarette, and he inhales greedily when Zayn lights it.

" _Do you still look at the stars?_ "

Niall nods shortly as Zayn fiddles with the door frame, fingers tracing a small patch of torn wood.

" _Will you fly away with me?_ "

"How?"

Zayn smiles wide, a warm glow contrasting against his cold skin, " _Don't forget me, okay? Don't forget me, and we'll fly away every night._ "

"Okay."

Zayn hugs him one last time, and then disappears down the corridor. A trail of wispy smoke is all that's left of Zayn, and Niall nearly chases the last pigment of Zayn he'll ever see down the seven flights of stairs.

If only he had a few more seconds.

— _

Niall shifts again, legs twitching at the vivid dream of crystal waters and warm beams of light. The moonlight drifts into his dream, replacing the warmth with hard asphalt and exhaust. He jerks and softly collapses into himself, cold linens pooled around his feet. His hands are shaking and his skin covered with ringlets of sweat. His alarm clock flashes three-something in the morning. This is his room albeit it doesn't feel the same. He turns his head, careful not to anger the throbbing headache, but he stops at the crinkle of paper.

" _ **Niall, your name is Niall Horan.**_ " and Niall blinks rapidly, he knows that. " _ **You have anterograde amnesia. Basically, you can't remember anything, including me.**_ " he sits up this time, small hands grasping the sticky note and clutching it. He analyzes the note, not remembering putting this down - but that's normal because he can't remember yesterday - not recognizing the chicken-scratch cursive. His ears twitch at the silent billow of his dark purple curtains. His head turns slightly, but he can already see the numerous others. Rows and rows of neatly placed sticky notes rustle, a paper applause, in the expanse of his room. The sticky notes are a deep black, thick white ink sprawled on the faces. They're like second skins to Niall, important things that he remembers loving or doing. They're tattooed with dates and daily tasks, something he's used to, but the sticky note in his hand is yellow, not black like the others. He notices the oddly misplaced yellow notes among the onyx sea of sticky notes. They're placed in random patterns, each one with different reminders.

" _ **My name is Zayn, but you don't know me.**_ " Niall watches the loose tips sway, and he reads the other notes, fingers dangerously on the verge of cutting on the thin edges of paper. " _ **You loved me yesterday, but you don't know me today. Let me help you remember.**_ " The note next to it explains who this person is, but nothing triggers memories in Niall. " _ **You don't know me. We met as neighbors but ended in a cliché romance. I was an interviewer, and you were my subject for about a year, maybe two.**_ " Niall inhales sharply at the next note. " _ **You cried here, a month or two after we met, because of loss, and I made love to you right here (31 March - 1 April 2014).**_ " Niall rubs his chest, violation and fear threading into his skin. " _ **We kissed right above you, on the roof. You stretched forward and kissed me with cold lips; it was snowing that day, a summer day (7 April 2014.).**_ " His palm rubs up the wall, knocking a few notes off the wall in the process. He doesn't feel anything, no spark, no tingles of happiness or shock, nothing. " _ **My book never published, but I saved you a copy. (27 July 2014).**_ " The next one makes him shudder. **"** _ **I witnessed you break down right here, and when you called my name, I heard you.**_ " The note is pointing towards his balcony, and Niall steps towards his bedroom door. " _ **I asked you to marry me. (28 November 2014).**_ " Niall feels the cool band dig into his skin and he starts to realize that he doesn't remember anything about his spouse. His fingers run over the cream wallpaper, his other hand touching the doorknob. He hesitantly turns the golden sphere, hoping to be met with his spouse, but the hallway is empty. The yellow sticky note on the wall opposite to him reads: " _ **You said 'Okay.' (29 November 2014).**_ "

He shouts _Hello?_ into the apartment, but no one responds. His floorboards are peeling and worn; they scratch his bare toes, but he ventures further into the dark shelter. He hears the hum of his fridge, the creaks of the china cabinet he inherited from his mum, the rattling of his walls, but he doesn't hear the voice he's hoping for. The floor runs cold under his toes, and he begins to shiver, cold sweat tumbling down his spine. Lone pieces of dog hair drift in the air, most likely from Momo, and the chill nibbles harshly at his bare arms. He feels the need to cry, but he doesn't have a reason to because he can't remember his own fuel of anticipation; that makes him want to cry even more. The moonlight dances through the casement windows, past two plush armchairs, and onto a coffee table. A large red book sits on the table, a thin burgundy one on top, and he sees the yellow sticky note wavering on the cover.

" _ **Don't forget me, okay?**_ "

__ _

**Author's Note:**

> Paragraph Break(s) Key -
> 
> \-- _ : next day(s)
> 
> __ _ : transitions


End file.
